The Future Price of Three-Strikes Sentencing

The public will pay a tremendous penalty for sentencing nonviolent offenders to a minimum of 25 years to life under the three-strikes law. The price we will have to pay will be far greater than the sentences we have placed on these people.

For someday it will all come back to us with greater force when we release these men and women. Not the same people who committed the nonviolent offenses, often while under the influence of drugs, but monsters having had their lives stolen and spent in violent prisons, where they got an education we can never comprehend. Men and women having to endure years of loneliness, having lost everything, unjustly sentenced based on their past behavior rather than their current of-fense.

Small offenses with heinous sentences. They will have nurtured their anger and hostility for years when the doors finally open for them. Whatever have we done to our loved ones and ourselves in the name of justice?

Barbara J. Brooks

Fullerton